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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30048642">[author's commentary] tired of waiting for tomorrow to come</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeswayappianway/pseuds/yeswayappianway'>yeswayappianway</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics), DCU</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Author Commentary, Bruce Springsteen References, DVD Commentary Challenge, Family, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Meta</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:29:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,808</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30048642</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeswayappianway/pseuds/yeswayappianway</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>author's commentary on</i> tired of waiting for tomorrow to come<i>, a fic about jason todd and feelings about bruce springsteen. written for the DVD Commentary Challenge.</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>DVD Commentary Challenge</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>[author's commentary] tired of waiting for tomorrow to come</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24368035">tired of waiting for tomorrow to come</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeswayappianway/pseuds/yeswayappianway">yeswayappianway</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this is exactly what it says in the summary! idk if anyone else wants to read it, but i had fun writing it, and remi enabled me, so here it is. pls enjoy if you feel like it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h1>preliminary notes!</h1>
<p>this originally started as a babs and jason fic! i'm a little mad that i didn't keep it that way, because i wish there was more babs fic in the world, and i wanted to do a bit more with her library work, but alas. i didn't actually think she'd care that much about springsteen, ultimately, and that was the part that was easier for me to dig into, emotionally</p>
<h1>texting babs about the new cd</h1>
<p>here is my jason and babs are siblings agenda!!!! i think jason is the only one who's there at the right time to get babs as an older sibling rather than a mentor figure or an intimidating resource, and i love the thing i've read in fic a lot where babs is actually one of the people that gets through to jason.</p>

<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“Tim keeps sending me memes because he knows there’s less chance of him saying something that makes me want to punch him,” Jason admits.</p>
</blockquote><p>tim is super determined to Befriend Jason and doesn't not yet realize that jason is already his friend, so he's decided to communicate exclusively via meme, which jason thinks is hilarious so he has no intention of stopping it</p>
<p>jason is, for the record, the only member of the batfam besides babs who actually DOES know how to put a hold on something at the library and has his library card number memorized. he really truly does not need babs's help to do this, which is exactly why he asks. RELATEDLY, i've just realized that getting a library card is totally why jason finally agrees to be declared legally alive again.</p>
<h1>"Jason’s always had a thing about Bruce Springsteen."</h1>
<p>this is like, kind of the thesis of my jason+springsteen feelings. here are some related feelings i had at remi while writing this: </p>

<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>basically jason is all [waves hands] macho looking? like he's big and tough and wears leather jackets yknow? and i feel like people sometimes give him a very... dean winchester personality lol (which i think is partly the fault of rhato but also partly the fault of jensen ackles voicing jason in utrh). and i feel like jason would feel weird about that, because he does look very macho, but he can't do much about that? it's just... how he looks? and i think he'd be really self conscious about doing things that play into that image, which listening to bruce springsteen definitely does, but like there's a layer there of like... the image most people have of bruce springsteen is equally kind of inaccurate? idk the point is, jason knows that admitting he listens to bruce springsteen sounds like the kind of thing that the guy people think he is would do (is this all sort of about my weirdly deeply held headcanon that jason doesn't care about cars? MAYBE) jason is a city boy! jason is the most city-est of boys!! he has never driven a car in his LIFE he takes the bus everywhere! why would he Care About Cars!!!! anwyay jason knows he looks like a guy who likes cars, and he knows saying he likes bruce springsteen sounds like a Guy Who LIkes Cars thing to say, so he feels weird about the whole thing<br/>i love the idea that jason really does love springsteen, but he also is like 'ah this man who has very clear daddy issues and sings about people getting dealt shit luck in life and also his name is bruce is possibly. a little close to my own issues. i'm going to ignore that'</p>
</blockquote><p>also my parents had a born in the usa cassette, and i don't ever remember listening to it, but that is why jason's mom also has a born in the usa cassette. also because i believe in aging jason appropriately (i have a whole different rant about how hard it is to deal with the association of comics characters with the era they were created in vs how old they should be now, and the short version is that i wanted to make sure i wasn't giving jason 80s music taste bc he's from the 80s inexplicably but for real life millennial reasons)</p>

<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>or the way Jason flinches when someone references Springsteen as “Bruce” in conversation if it does come up</p>
</blockquote><p>NO, no i did NOT consider the "bruce" connection until i tried to write this and realized with horror that i'd have to fullname bruce springsteen because there is only room for one emotionally significant bruce in jason's internal life. it's good tho</p>
<p>this is only barely relevant, but one of the lines from dancing in the dark is "I check my look in the mirror/I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face" which is imo extremely a queer feeling and also a big part of jason's whole looking macho image thing. jason almost came out three different times in this fic. this is the first one. (also, there's a billion covers of this song, but <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1JYXY15k6E">lucy dacus</a> is my current favorite</p>
<h1>jason humming on comms, bruce remembering, jason and tim arguing</h1>
<p>this is one of the scenes i added when this thing grew an emotional arc, and BOY had i not intended to write from bruce's pov. i had the idea about jason calling him boss though and couldn't figure out another way to do it so here we are</p>

<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Bruce thinks there’s about a fifty/fifty chance that actually, Tim does know it, and just couldn’t figure it out. Jason has never had particularly musical talents.</p>
</blockquote><p>bruce is not afraid to accurately drag his kids. idk i just liked the idea of jason not being particularly good at staying on pitch when he sings by himself</p>
<p>i have a whole theory that gotham is actually philadelphia, but i had to go with the jersey location because springsteen. (i do have a friend who's a huge springsteen fan and is from philly though so, spiritually, i think this still works. plus, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z2DtNW79sQ">streets of philadelphia</a>)</p>
<p>kid jason: bruce is so cool, im gonna call him boss! like the boss! because they're both bruce!</p>
<p>bruce: oh no is jason distancing himself from me because he only thinks i accept him conditionally as an employee figure? does he think this is a transactional relationship? he's my son, how do i fix this</p>
<h1>babs texts jason the river intro</h1>
<p>THIS is the scene that started this whole fic!!!! so like, i am once again asking you to listen to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNOPVJkBX04">the intro 2 minutes of the river from the live '75-'85 box set</a> and CRY WITH ME. here is the full text, in case you haven't listened to it:</p>

<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>This is ah… When I was growing up, me and my dad used to go at it all the time over almost anything. But, ah, I used to have really long hair, way down past my shoulders. I was 17 or 18, oh man, he used to hate it. And we got to where we’d fight so much that I’d, that I’d spent a lot of time out of the house; and in the summertime it wasn’t so bad, ‘cause it was warm, and my friends were out, but in the winter, I remember standing downtown where it’d get so cold and, when the wind would blow, I had this phone booth I used to stand in. And I used to call my girl, like, for hours at a time, just talking to her all night long. And finally I’d get my nerve up to go home. I’d stand there in the driveway and he’d be waiting for me in the kitchen and I’d tuck my hair down on my collar and I’d walk in and he’d call me back to sit down with him. And the first thing he’d always ask me was what did I think I was doing with myself. And the worst part of it was that I could never explain to him.<br/>I remember I got in a motorcycle accident once and I was laid up in bed and he had a barber come in and cut my hair and, man, I can remember telling him that I hated him and that I would never ever forget it. And he used to tell me: “Man, I can’t wait till the army gets you. When the army gets you they’re gonna make a man out of you. They’re gonna cut all that hair off and they’ll make a man out of you.”<br/>And this was, I guess, ’68 when there was a lot of guys from the neighbourhood going to Vietnam. I remember the drummer in my first band coming over to my house with his marine uniform on, saying that he was going and that he didn’t know where it was. And a lot of guys went, and a lot of guys didn’t come back. And the lot that came back weren’t the same anymore. I remember the day I got my draft notice. I hid it from my folks and three days before my physical me and my friends went out and we stayed up all night and we got on the bus to go that morning and man we were all so scared… And I went, and I failed. I came home [audience cheers], it’s nothing to applaud about… I remember coming home after I’d been gone for three days and walking in the kitchen and my mother and father were sitting there and my dad said: “Where you been?” and I said, uh, “I went to take my physical.” He said “What happened?” I said “They didn’t take me.” And he said: “That’s good.”</p>
</blockquote><p>bruce springsteen has a lot of stories about his dad. most of them aren't great. this one lodged itself so deep into my brain the first time i heard it that it's never come out, and i think, as i tried to gesture at in the story (and boy was i worried -and still am worried!- that the HUGE feelings i have about this connection wouldn't come through for someone who isn't a springsteen fan), that it works incredibly well for jason. like, this dad who yells at his son all the time, tells him he's fucking up, says he needs to be tougher and live up to his potential, and YET when this thing that should theoretically do all those things comes up, and his son isn't allowed to do it, he realizes that he cares more about his son being safe and alive. like!!! fuck!!!!!!! and also the way that it's never really… it's not emotional at all, really, but it's there. that's a really bruce thing to do, i think.</p>
<p>i never did decide if jason talks to commissioner gordon about bruce springsteen. i just think, for me, springsteen is inextricably linked to parent+child relationships, and also i think commissioner gordon should be A Dad TM</p>
<h1>jason and dick cleaning up jason's old room</h1>
<p>this was another scene that got added once i realized that i was accidentally writing a 'jason finds his way back to a comfortable relationship with his family' fic. i have a lot of feelings about jason and dick and i definitely wrote them a bit more amiable here than i generally think of, and maybe more amiable than they really should be at this point, but the idea was that jason's been around for a while and he's been working with the bats for a while, so he's not on Bad terms with them anymore, it's just that he hasn't let himself try to go back to being /family/ with them until this point. i also really liked the idea of jason deciding to clean up his old room, in contrast to everyone else leaving it alone and preserved as a memorial, and dick (whether or not he's consciously thinking about it) really /getting/ that need break down the things that crystalize you in time so that you can be a whole person. also i had just cleaned out a bunch of my old stuff from my room at my parents' house lol.</p>
<p>damian does not wear the hand me downs, because when dick tries to get bruce on his side, bruce doesn't understand the concept. dick and jason shake their heads bc rich people. also, i can't remember if damian dressing like mini-bruce is just widespread fanon or actually based in canon, but it's definitely my headcanon always.</p>
<p>i did at one point consider a version where dick was the one who gave jason the springsteen shirt as a birthday present and neither of them could remember that, but then i got too sad, so i moved the memory issues earlier to make them slightly less heartbreaking for me. memory issues are pretty much a 'go straight to angst, do not pass go, do not collect any money' for me, so i tend to avoid them, but i think part of jason coming back to the family for me has to be other people not realizing (and then slowly realizing) what all he's dealing with because jason just doesn't feel the need to tell them, and i did think think was a good way to work that concept in.</p>
<p>me, writing this: ohhhh dick was a terror to clean up after as a kid wasn't he</p>
<p>teen jason absolutely plays the full river double album during his and dick's road trip and just skips all the depressing songs. he's actually a pretty good road trip passenger i think. tangentially: <a href="https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/brucespringsteen/independenceday.html">independence day</a> (which is on the river) is SUCH a good song for dick and bruce fighting and dick leaving</p>
<p>yes i do own a greetings from asbury park t-shirt. pretty sure it's from target.</p>
<p>i know jason making death jokes and everyone else being Not Cool with it is the usual move, and i think the most reasonable one. but i do very love the concept of jason making death jokes, but whenever anyone else tries to make one, he gets all fake offended, and dick is like 'this is deeply unfair'. everyone in the batfam has a very morbid sense of humor, imo. it's a coping mechanism.</p>
<p>this was the second scene where jason almost came out! i originally thought maybe there was a springsteen poster on the wall, and dick was gonna somehow make a joke about like 'wow you must have been really into him, you had like two posters' and jason would have said something like 'if it had been just to look at it wouldn't have been /that/ poster, he's way hotter in the 70s' but i got annoyed trying to figure out how to make it seem natural, and also it almost would have had to be a born in the usa poster then, and i felt like i'd referenced born in the usa too many times, so alas, jason did not come out here either. he definitely is more into 70s springsteen than 80s springsteen, though, and therefore if he's trying to look like any version of bruce springsteen, it's definitely <a href="https://hips.hearstapps.com/esq.h-cdn.co/assets/16/38/1474650045-moto-jacket-3297367.jpg?resize=480:*">skinny smiley leather jacket</a> and <a href="https://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2019/10/springsteen2.jpg?w=980&amp;q=75">earring</a> and <a href="https://dqnd2s53vp2ic.cloudfront.net/crop/4e/fc/600x600/bruce_springsteen__young.jpg">converse</a> 70s springsteen.</p>
<h1>steph intruding</h1>
<p>it was important to me that, once i realized i was writing a 'jason comes back to the batfam' fic, i didn't let everything go well. not that this scene goes horribly, but it's just not a great time. and that's okay! sometimes you do like your friend or your family member but they can rub you the wrong way at times and it doesn't make them bad or mean you hate them, but it also doesn't make it pleasant when it happens. it does suck that i decided to make that person steph, because i think steph and jason could get along super well and have a lot of interesting commonalities and conflicts, but she worked the best here (other than tim, who i'd already mentioned twice, and i wanted at least one more female character and i couldn't see cass having the same sort of reaction to jason's music or self-image).</p>
<p>i very much subscribe to the 'jason can cook' headcanon.</p>
<p>the first song playing in this scene is magic, which <a href="https://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics.php?song=magic">uses a stage magician as a metaphor for various public figures who lie to the public</a>, so i thought that would be a good jason song in principles as well as setting a good angsty tone for the scene. (jason in this fic, like me, has a 'sad springsteen' playlist.) i also thought it worked pretty well as being unrecognizably stereotype springsteen, so steph would have no reason to realize what's playing</p>
<p>the second song is <a href="https://genius.com/Bruce-springsteen-my-hometown-lyrics">my hometown</a>, which is all about a guy who grows up with his dad showing them around the town they live in, and then growing up and having his own son who /he/ shows around their town, which he thinks of as his hometown even though they're planning on maybe leaving since it's all going to shit and the jobs are all gone. so, you know. gotham. i care a LOT about jason being the person after bruce who cares the most about gotham as a place that he has an emotional connection to.</p>
<p>this is scene number three in which jason almost came out. i at first considered actually having steph say something like 'have fun with your straight white dude music' and jason being like 'uh i'm not straight' but then it didn't feel right for her to be saying it (and then i fell down a rabbit hole of trying to figure out what people who don't care about bruce springsteen would assume about someone who listens to it). and then i also considered jason thinking about how he doesn't have many like... interests? and so it really sucks when he displays one of them and immediately gets judged, but i couldn't figure out how to phrase that in his head/the narration, but i decided to lean into that a bit more, in addition to the flag-waving stereotype. i'm actually really happy with how this turned out, and i think the 'sometimes you like someone and someone disparages it and it hits you way harder than it probably should' feeling is Good and also something that i find interesting with jason in particular, but i am a little frustrated that i kept telling myself that jason coming out wasn't ~relevant to the story~. someday i'll get there.</p>
<p>if i had to pick a line that i think would have hit me the hardest if i was reading this instead of writing it, i'm pretty sure it would be "Well, he wishes he could go back to being fifteen for a lot of reasons." that's just the kind of offhand 'ouch' that i tend to react well to in writing. hopefully it works the same way for people reading this</p>
<h1>jason helping alfred and then talking to bruce</h1>
<p>when i originally wrote this, i had written up through the scene where jason watches the video of the intro to the river, and thinks about if this would be enough for him to patch things up with bruce. remi asked if i knew if i knew the answer to that question, and this scene is what i knew i had to write once i decided i was trying to actually answer that. i also know that if i ever write anything about jason and the family, it has to involve alfred heavily. i think alfred is the one uncomplicatedly positive relationship jason has with anyone batfam involved, and especially in a story structured around fathers and sons (as any good springsteen story often is), alfred had to be important. also a lot of this fic is kind of… domestic? and so alfred and jason working in the kitchen felt really good.</p>
<p>relatedly, i wanted to do it from alfred's point of view, because i liked the idea of him hearing the big conversation, but also because i think alfred deserves to have some feelings and some emotional repression just like everyone else in this damn family, and i don't know if i did as much with that as i wanted, but it at least gave me a chance to try it.</p>
<p>yes i did take the opportunity to pepper in a little 'bruce in high school was a disaster in all ways, including in his music tastes' headcanon. it's a little bit of an homage to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/11091204">audreycritter's fic where bruce was a punk in high school</a>.</p>
<p>please "enjoy" the notes from <a href="https://genius.com/Bruce-springsteen-my-fathers-house-lyrics">genius about My Father's House</a>, which are the biggest damn batfam mood i've ever seen:</p>

<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>During the late seventies, Bruce had begun to deal with mental illness, inheriting his father’s depressive self-isolation. For years, he would drive at night past his father’s house in Freehold, sometimes up to three or four times a week. Driven to suicidal thoughts, he started seeing a therapist in 1982.<br/>Introducing the song during the Devils and Dust tour, he elaborated on his therapist’s thoughts on the trips: “He said, ‘What you’re doing is that something bad happened, and you’re going back, thinking that you can make it right again. Something went wrong, and you keep going back to see if you can fix it or somehow make it right.’ And I sat there and I said, ‘That is what I’m doing.’ And he said, ‘Well, you can’t.’”</p>
</blockquote><p>i mean it's also a huge bruce mood, because arguably trying to go back and make right a bad thing that happened is the whole origin of batman, and i think the fact that this resonates with both bruce AND jason is one of the reasons i have SO many jason feelings about this song</p>
<p>idk i don't have a ton to say about jason and bruce's conversation, because i said most of it in the conversation, which i feel really good about. this is a generous interpretation maybe, but that's what i like fanfic for. give the characters the chance to say the things i think they need to, and then maybe they can get better from there. jason keeps accidentally being forced to think about his issues with bruce (that aren't related to the joker but are very much related to fathers and sons) because of listening to bruce springsteen, and maybe he went down a rabbit hole of youtube videos of springsteen talking about his dad that inspired him to have this conversation.</p>
<p>i haven't been regularly reading batman and the outsiders but i did read the first six or seven issues, and i do love duke and cass having a bond, and i wanted to at least mention them since i didn't work them into the actual story.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>if you go back to the original fic, i did list a full 'playlist' for the fic if you're so inclined to check it out. all versions are original studio releases unless otherwise noted.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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